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A week to wait on gas

EPA approves waiver in effort to ease crunch

Plastic bags will continue to cover gas pumps in Athens and across the Southeast for another week, even as the federal government takes steps to ease gas shortages.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday that North Georgia gas stations can sell ordinary gasoline through Oct.12 in addition to the cleaner-burning blend usually sold here.

“I don’t know that it’ll solve (the shortage), but it’ll certainly help somewhat,” said Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue.

In a letter to Perdue, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson acknowledged “acute shortages” of gas in Georgia due to refinery damage, and said waiving a low-sulfur fuel requirement will “minimize or prevent disruption of an adequate supply of gasoline in Georgia.”

The waiver is intended to alleviate shortages that have filling stations temporarily shutting down and some drivers panicking as the needle slips closer to “E.” But drivers may not see a difference for days.

Filling station owners don’t know when larger gas shipments might start arriving. Refineries only are shipping about a third of the gas they usually do, Golden Pantry President Brian Griffith said, and haven’t told station owners when that will change.

“We’re getting all the gas we can,” Griffith said. “As far as the EPA waiver ... we have very limited information about when it’s going to get (to the pump).”

Gas supplies should return nearly to normal in about five to 10 days, he said.

In the meantime, though, suppliers will be able to ship and gas stations sell any type of gasoline, not just the low-sulfur variety usually sold in and around metro Atlanta to help clean up the region’s dirty air.

“Every day it gets a little better, and more and more will come,” Brantley said. “We still may be a couple weeks out from getting back to full, normal supply.”

Perdue asked the EPA for the waiver Monday, and U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson joined him Tuesday.

“With the decrease in supplies of gasoline due to recent hurricanes, it is absolutely critical to temporarily extend relief from the sulfur gasoline requirement until supplies are back to normal,” Isakson said in a news release.

A similar waiver was in effect from Sept. 12 through Sept. 15, Athens-Clarke Environmental Coordinator Dick Field said.

“I think they were basically trying to increase supply, so whatever you could get your hands on you could use,” Field said.

Tankers stacked up outside Houston last week waiting for refinery repairs to unload their cargo as the price of a barrel of crude oil jumped $18 to $122.60, the Oil Price Information Service reported Monday.

Athens drivers are paying more than $4 for a gallon of regular unleaded — if they can get it at all. Georgia’s average price of $4.01 per gallon is the third-highest in the nation, behind Alaska and Hawaii.

The EPA phased in super-low-sulfur fuel in 45 Georgia counties, including Clarke, Oconee, Madison, Barrow and Jackson, between 1999 and 2004. It reduces smog because it contains fewer pollutants and less fuel evaporates as it’s pumped.